Seven Hand Reel

Seven Hand Reel is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by George Williams in 2025. It is a dance for 7 people. In this dance the men are permuted by: 123 and the women by: 111. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

I have been looking at the old Scottish Reels. There are reels of 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 but there's no reel of 7 (that I can find anyway).

You could have everyone in a long line, and do half a reel across in the first eight bars (with maybe a clap for the extra bar), and then have the two end dancers set toward the middle while the middle dancers set in one direction and then turn 180 to set in the other. It would probably work. But that's not what they did for the reels of 5 or 6 or 8.

So one dancer in the middle and a circle (or hexagon, if you prefer) of dancers around him/her, facing in.

Perhaps a tandem reel? Top couple splits and faces in opposite directions, other couples in tandem face closest top dancer, middle dancer follows in tandem with one of the top dancers... everyone end home. It would probably work but would not be a figure used in the 1800s.

So split the set, middle dancer and the top couple dance a reel of three (middle dancer splitting the top couple), while the other two couples pass partner right for a reel of four along the circle.

Inspired by Polka Dot Polka and Thomas Wilson's reels, I want to make it progressive. I have 8 bars of setting and 7 people to mix up. The method used in Polka Dots would take 24 bars, far too long. So I'll do three hands across ?, in 2 bars to put and new dancer in the center, then repeat that two more times to mix everyone up. That leaves to more bars for everyone to set. Oh, the dancers not in the left hands across might as well set too.

If you find ? of hands across takes more than 2 bars, then you could only do ?. That works too. But try to be consistent, otherwise the progression will be odd.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

The dances of George Williams (including this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

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A	1-8	Middle dancer face up, others face partner, middle dancer pass dancer on his right by right for a reel of three with the top pair, while others pass partner right for a reel of four
B	1-2	Top pair and middle dancer left hands across two thirds, while the others set
	3-4	Next pair (clockwise) and new middle dancer left hands across two thirds, while others set
	5-6	Last pair and new middle dancer left hands across two thirds, while the others set
	7-8	All set, middle dancer sets to top, others to center